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8:31 PM, Monday September 21st 2020
Starting with your arrows, you're drawing these with a great sense of flow and fluidity. The only thing that's missing is that the spacing between the zigzagging sections does not appear to get narrower as the arrow moves away from the viewer. Remember that even this negative space is subject to foreshortening, as shown here.
Moving onto the organic forms with contour lines, you've done a great job of sticking to simple sausage forms - something that students often seem to miss, for some reason. You're also drawing the contour lines themselves with a lot of confidence, which helps maintain the illusion that they're smoothly wrapping around the rounded surface of the sausage forms, and you're demonstrating a good understanding of how the degree of your contour lines changes as we slide along the length of a given form. The only issue I noticed was that when doing the first page, with the contour ellipses, you tend to change the contour ellipse right at the tip a little too drastically, relative to the one just preceding it. You handle this far better in the second page.
Continuing onto the texture analyses, your work here does a great job of focusing on the use of clear shadow shapes rather than outlines, and you use those shadow shapes to control the density of your textures moving from left to right quite well. My only concern here is very minor, and frankly it's pretty normal for this stage. While you're doing a great job of focusing on shadow shapes, I think your effort should be focused especially on observation itself. Right now the textures feel a little simplistic - not terribly oversimplified, but it does suggest that more time can be spent on studying the reference images, and more importantly that you should be sure to look at your reference image frequently to continuously refresh your memory of what you're meant to be drawing. Get in the habit of identifying specific textural forms, then transferring them over to your drawing, one by one, rather than spending even short periods of time without looking at your reference.
That said, I do think that your overall observational skills show a great deal of improvement throughout the dissections, but you also have more of a tendency to outline your textural forms rather than relying purely on shadow shapes, especially when the textural forms themselves are more separated from one another (like scales or bricks). This issue is explained in these notes, so be sure to give them a read. Always remember - shadow shapes are key, and one thing to help you continue to focus on them is to ensure that every textural mark you make is made with this two step process.
Jumping ahead, your form intersections are really well done. Youv'e done a great job with the linework, and that has helped you draw the forms such that they feel cohesive and consistent within the same space. The intersections themselves have an excellent start, and frankly you're demonstrating a strong grasp of the relationships between these forms - despite this being a concept we merely want to introduce at this point, with the intent of exploring them further throughout the entirety of the course.
Lastly, you've similary done a great job with the organic intersections, in terms of establishing how these forms interact with one another in 3D space, and how they sag and slump over one another creating an illusion of gravity. My only comment here is that you should always try to stick to simple sausage forms, treating them like really filled water balloons. Avoid cases like the top of the last page, where it's kind of oozing into that groove beneath it - they'll sag over one another, but there should be enough tension there to maintain their overall form.
All in all your work is coming along great. I'll go ahead and mark this lesson as complete.
Next Steps:
Feel free to move onto lesson 3.
2:06 AM, Thursday September 24th 2020
Thanks for the critique! I definitely need to improve my illusion of depth as well as my textures. I'll add arrows to my warm ups and maybe get started on the 25 texture challenge while I do lesson 3.
Pentel Pocket Brush Pen
This is a remarkable little pen. Technically speaking, any brush pen of reasonable quality will do, but I'm especially fond of this one. It's incredibly difficult to draw with (especially at first) due to how much your stroke varies based on how much pressure you apply, and how you use it - but at the same time despite this frustration, it's also incredibly fun.
Moreover, due to the challenge of its use, it teaches you a lot about the nuances of one's stroke. These are the kinds of skills that one can carry over to standard felt tip pens, as well as to digital media. Really great for doodling and just enjoying yourself.